12.01.09

Summary: Microsoft is weaseling out of financial obligations, so the public is as mad as Hell and won’t take this anymore

A former Microsoft employee (probably disgruntled) is spilling the beans on the company he once served and he points the finger at Bill, Steve, and Brad (Smith), who are being labeled “the perpetrators”. We wrote about this a month ago and it’s all over the Internet right now. Here is BoingBoing’s summary:

Last week, Microsoft told Seattle’s KUOW: ‘We pay all our tax obligations everywhere we are, properly.’ Today, Microsoft Tax Dodge, a new website focused on the company’s royalty tax dodge, challenged CEO Steve Ballmer today to live up to his spoken commitment to transparent business practices: ‘At this point, I think it’s reasonable to ask Microsoft to back up that claim with a public explanation of the company’s licensing operations. In that spirit, will you tell the public how it is that Microsoft has avoided paying Washington State’s B&O Royalty Tax for the past 12 years?’ Washington State currently faces a projected $2.6 billion deficit. In addition to the ethical and public relations issues that crumbling bridges and overcrowded schools (Seattle recently considered making D a passing grade) present to the state’s most profitable company, the company also faces deeper scrutiny of the legality of its tax practice.

“Recall Charles Pancerzewski, who blew the whistle on Microsoft’s financial fraud. Microsoft paid him $4 million to keep quiet.”This case of whistleblowing (if it qualifies as whistleblowing) would not be the first one that we cover. Recall Charles Pancerzewski, who blew the whistle on Microsoft’s financial fraud. Microsoft paid him $4 million to keep quiet [1, 2].

One subject that we raised here before is that Bill Gates uses his investments foundation to escape tax, so it is not just his practices at Microsoft Corporation that count as tax dodging or even tax evasion (Microsoft was found guilty of that).

Gates Keepers, a Web site that keeps track of the Gates Foundation, is currently raising the following criticism: “Save the Children calls on the Gates Foundation supported GAVI to be more accountable”

It is good to see people calling GAVI to account. What a treat to have the usually conservative, big business-linked and Gates Foundation-funded Save the Children make this call.

Follow the money. Just don’t expect this money to be taxed, just laundered. Tax is for the lower and middle classes to pay, not the super-rich with the super-tricks. They know the loopholes in this system because it is them who usually make and pass the laws. The next post will cover ACTA. █

“My background is finance and accounting. As a socially conscious venture capitalist and philanthropist, I have a very good understanding of wealth management and philanthropy. I started my career in 1967 with the IRS as a specialist in taxation covering many areas of the tax law including the so-called legal loopholes to charitable giving. […] However, the Gates Buffet foundation grant is nothing more than a shell game in which control of assets for both Gates and Buffet remain the same. […] The only difference is that the accumulation of wealth by these two will be much more massive because they will no longer have to pay any taxes.”

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A Single Comment

Legal and tax regimes have always favoured those with influence and the resources to play the system. This is often at the expense of those of us who do not. It will always be an uphill fight to create a more equitable system.

Microsoft's charm offensives against Free/libre software are proving to be rather effective, despite them involving a gross distortion of facts and exploitation of corruptible elements in the corporate media

A British MEP criticises Battistelli and the management of the European Patent Office (EPO) while Baroness Lucy Neville-Rolfe, UK Minister for Intellectual Property, gets closer to Battistelli in a tactless effort to improve relations